MAYHEM
Issue Three – October 2015
ISSN 2382-0322
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Indigo Smith
An open letter to an old friend
If you knew then what I know now...
You wouldn’t have cared so much about how you looked. You would have woken up in the
morning thrown on some canvas sneakers, and pulled your wavy black hair into a French plait.
But you groan and swear and curse the four Woodies that you drunk the night before. You sit up
in bed and think about how much you hate your life, how much everything sucks and you just
want to leave.
You put on your fishnets and hooker-heels, pencil skirt and push-up bra, red lipstick and
mascara. Then you walk to school.
Across the field you stalk, weight thrown forward, back arched as your heels stab the ground.
You stomp down the corridor, burst into D4 and hurl your faux leather bag at the desk. No
apologies for lateness, you swear about the sunrise.
You still think you’re smarter than anyone else, you think you can trick your boss that you’re
vomiting from food poisoning, and fool your teachers that you missed the test because you had
the flu.
If you knew then what I know now, you wouldn’t have written an essay on The Handmaid’s Tale
and called a rape victim “pathetic.”
You feel like you’re stuck. You believe in Candace Bushnell’s Happily Ever After, where the
women are:
beautiful and smart
and mothers and powerful
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright remains with the individual author
MAYHEM
Issue Three – October 2015
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
and rich and sexy
and married and having an affair
and the CEO of their own company,
and a size 6
and fit enough to run a marathon
and wear bright lipstick and stiletto heels.
You wouldn’t have been a fashion student. You wouldn’t have been prescribed quetiapine, or
fluoxetine. You wouldn’t have thrown your phone across the room because you didn’t like a text.
If you knew then what I know now…
You would never have cheated on your boyfriend.
You would have dumped him instead.
But you flirt with boys, and bask in male attention. Flick glances over your shoulder, and smirk
through your bleach blonde hair. You swing your hips as you strut through school, and never
have any female friends.
You read about Monroe’s magnetism, learn the history of Madonna and Gaultier, and
misinterpret Vivienne Westwood’s claim that “fashion is about sex.”
You talk about fucking with your best mate as he hands you his cigarette. You fancy yourself as
a femme fatale. You leave red marks around the filter, as you suck the thick smoke into your
young lungs.
You text strangers and practice saying slutty things, remember what Cosmo said about ‘What
Men Want.’
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright remains with the individual author
Issue Three – October 2015
MAYHEM
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
You try to start fights with your boyfriend because you’re so bored of doing the same thing. He’s
broke, so whenever you go to McDonald’s and ask what he wants – “McChicken burger” – you
order a hamburger Happy Meal, just to get him worked up.
You laugh when he looks at you, with those blue eyes that are telling you to “grow up.”
You wouldn’t have been a temporary lesbian or a topless waitress.
You wouldn’t have slept with your brother’s slut of a friend.
If you knew then what I know now…
You would never have thrown a door against your mother’s face, letting the glass pane shatter
against the woman who never cries. You would never have left her to dissolve onto the lino, into
a puddle on the kitchen floor.
But you do, you leave her alone, and go to the boy in the car with the bottle of wine.
When you fight, you declare just how independent you are. At the top of your lungs, standing on
the cobblestones your voice rips through the grapevine, smashes into the sparrows on the wire,
and knocks over the saplings that line the street.
You scream the house down, shriek “I know what the fuck I’m doing.”
You shout at your mother to “Stop! Stop parenting me.”
Your heart really hurts sometimes, when you think about how your sister said “I hate you.”
Sometimes you cry because everyone thinks you’re a bitch and you’re terrified that they might
just be right. Your friends joke that you’re “really hot, but such a bitch that it’s not worth it.”
You can’t stand being around your brother because he shushes you, closes his eyes and blocks
his ears. He laughs with your father after you’ve stormed down the hall in a whirl of tears. You
slam doors with gale force winds.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright remains with the individual author
MAYHEM
Issue Three – October 2015
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
But.
If you knew then what I know now…
You wouldn’t have met your short, sassy fashion friend, or your scarily intelligent fine arts
friend. You wouldn’t have had the chance to be brave enough, proud that you told your father to
fuck off. You wouldn’t have begun listening to your mother when she said things like, “This too
shall pass.” You wouldn’t have learnt to be grateful, that change is inevitable. You wouldn’t
have learnt that life is fluid. You wouldn’t have ended up at University,
and you sure as shit
would not
be writing
this.
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© Copyright remains with the individual author